1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of three dimensional (3-D) stereoscopic imaging and display technologies in general and relates more particularly to stereoscopic photography, television, motion picture, printing and computer displays.
2. Description of Related Art
The binocular vision of humans perceives the real world as 3-D images. This fact results from a combination of the physiological and psychological properties of the human pair of eyes. The pair of eyes is the most important source of depth perception. Because of its spherical shape, the retina of a single eye collects only two-dimensional image information. Therefore, cues of the third dimension (depth) can never be collected by the retina of a single eye.
The inventions of printing (1450) and photography (1839) enabled man to cheaply mass-produce pictures for popular use. There has always been the awareness that these technologies lacked the third dimension (depth), and therefore, the desire to invent ways to faithfully capture and reproduce nature as 3-D images has persisted throughout the ages. Around the year 1600, Giovanni Battista della Porta produced the first artificial 3-D drawing. The history and evolution of 3-D imaging techniques are surveyed in T. Okoshi, Three-Dimensional Imaging Techniques, Academic Press, New York, 1976, and T. Okoshi, Three Dimensional Displays, Proc. IEEE, 68, 548 (1980). Accounts of the most recent activities in 3-D technologies were recently presented in the Conference on Three-Dimensional Visualization and Display Technologies, in Los Angeles, Calif., Jan. 18-20, 1989 and published in the Proceedings of the International Society for Optical Engineers, SPIE volume 1083, edited by Woodrow E. Robbins and Scott S. Fisher.
3-D imaging is classified into two major classes: Autostereoscopic Imaging, a technique which produces 3-D images that can be viewed directly without the aid of wearing special eye-glasses; and Binocular Stereoscopic Imaging, a technique that requires wearing special eye-glasses.